Inside CIBF

Gary Egan

CIBF Director

Professor Egan provides strategic leadership to the research programs. He is also responsible for establishing the management needed to support a vibrant and internationally-competitive brain research centre, and for nurturing CIBF’s relationships with Government, industry, the community, and neuroscience groups, both national and international.

Gary’s chief research interests are in developing and applying advanced brain imaging techniques, and neuroinformatics.

Peter Robinson

Chief Investigator, and leader Modeling and Neurotechnology

Professor Robinson coordinates mathematical modelling across CIBF, with his research focusing on developing physiologically-based, quantitative models of brain function.

Peter has a wide range of skills and expertise across fields that include physics, mathematics, and neuroscience, and is involved in formulating new models of attention, perception and decision-related dynamics.

Pankaj Sah

Chief Investigator, and leader Neuronal Circuits

As leader of the Neuronal Circuits research theme, Professor Sah provides expertise, infrastructure and leadership for CIBF research programs requiring stimulation and manipulation of neural activity during specific behavioural tasks.

Pankaj’s research focuses on neuronal function in circuits that underpin cognition. He is well known for developing techniques to study and manipulate electrophysiological activity in large neural networks associated with emotional processing.

Greg Stuart

Chief Investigator, leader Cells and Synapses

As the leader for the Cells and Synapses research theme, Professor Greg Stuart coordinates research focused on single nerve cells. He also has an important mentoring role, training the Centre’s researchers in techniques for recording from single cells and manipulating their activity using optogenetics.

Greg is internationally recognised as an expert on information processing in nerve cells.

Ehsan Arabzadeh

Chief Investigator

Associate Professor Arabzadeh is studying sensory processing at the level of single cells and neuronal populations. His lab, the Neural Coding Group, is combining electrophysiological recordings, optical imaging, and computational analyses to create detailed models of the neural circuits that underpin the efficient encoding and decoding of sensory signals.

Ehsan is recognised for his contributions to the field of neuronal coding, including seminal work on the link between the cortical circuits, neuronal activity and behaviour.

Marta Garrido

Chief Investigator

Specifically, she is using electroencephalography, functional magnetic resonance imaging, psychophysics and computational modelling to understand how humans form predictions, make decisions, and how these two functions are shaped by attention.

Ulrike Grünert

Chief Investigator

Associate Professor Grünert is a key contributor to CIBF research that requires high-resolution anatomical analyses to address the neural computations involved in attention, prediction and decision-making.

Ulrike is recognised for her capacity to produce detailed reconstructions of neuronal pathways, including the synaptic connections of individual neurons. Her work for CIBF is a fundamental complement to the physiological analyses of the Cells and Synapses and Neural Circuits themes.

Arthur Lowery

Chief Investigator

Professor Lowery brings to CIBF expertise in wireless implants for brain stimulation, developed during the Monash Vision Group’s bionic eye project. He is also an expert in the use of mathematical models to study massively-complex systems, gained from working in telecommunications systems modelling.

Arthur is internationally recognised for his innovations in optical communications, and commercialization of research ideas.

George Paxinos

Chief Investigator

Professor Paxinos is a major contributor to the Brain Systems and Neural Circuits themes; he is the principal person investigating similarities and differences between brain structures in animals and humans.

George has vast experience in the field of brain anatomy and in developing databases for integration of multiple streams of neuroanatomical data.

Stan Skafidas

Chief Investigator

Professor Skafidas is developing technologies to help CIBF address questions about brain function.

Stan’s team develops nanoscale systems for high-resolution electrical stimulation, recording and biochemical measurement. He also contributes his experience to the model building and prediction research programs.